


Parallel

by sea_level



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: A brief exploration of this world as told by Nick Carraway, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Just Worldbuilding Through Observation, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, POV First Person, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, just a smidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24874279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level
Summary: Sure I have loved, but I've falleninlove exactly once in my life. How odd was it, then, that I'd come all the way to New York to find purpose, and all that I'd managed to do was to fall in love with my cousin's soulmate.
Relationships: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	Parallel

**Author's Note:**

> I was a few days ago years old when I learned that dowsing rods are like.....not like a scientific thing. Thanks Pokemon. Anyways, the fic should explain everything you need to know.
> 
> I had like a bunch of soulmate ideas in a google keep note and I was like. Wait. What if I actually used one of them.
> 
> The following relationships are mentioned as existing in this fic: Daisy/Jay, Daisy/Tom, Jordan/Nick. Cause like. You can't explore soulmates without also exploring relationships. Comically enough, the only soulmates in this fic are Daisy/Jay. But this is not a Daisy/Jay fic. This is a Nick is sad and gay and lonely fic.

The soulmate phenomenon is a strange one, though few would label it as such.

There's a saying where I come from that those that ponder it are either philosophers or broken-hearted. I used to think I was the philosopher in this situation, but now I'm not so sure.

I've personally never met my soulmate, and, given my rapidly shrinking social circles, the odds that I will ever meet them are increasingly small. I've never been a romantic, and I've never particularly cared to listen to fate. At least twenty percent of people never even meet their soulmate anyway.

My dowsing rods are on the inside of my left wrist, near the palm of my hand, two narrow, parallel lines, almost as far apart as they are long. The doula who'd helped my mother through my birth had, apparently, warned my mother that the size and placement did not bode well for my romantic future.

In my younger and more idealistic years, I had regarded this as simple superstition and nothing more. Now, though, with all my experiences and worldly cynicism, I'm willing to give the thought more weight, even without suitable scientific backing.

Sure I have loved, but I've fallen _in_ love exactly once in my life. How odd was it, then, that I'd come all the way to New York to find purpose, and all that I'd managed to do was to fall in love with my cousin's soulmate.

Gatsby's soulmark, his dowsing rods, are two bold lines, close in distance and located on the outside of his right wrist. I know very little about what the doula would have said about it, but it's practically the exact opposite of mine, so would think it would mean good things for him.

Daisy's soulmark is high up on her left forearm near the elbow. It's a delicate thing, though her dowsing rods are thicker and darker than mine. Closer together too. I've only every seen them cross when she's with Gatsby, at least in the few glimpses that I was granted of their affair. I saw them kiss exactly once, twin crosses on full display for me to see.

But for all that they're soulmates and for all that Gatsby has done to reunite them, Daisy never stays the night.

I often saw Daisy at family gatherings as a child. She was a considerable deal younger than I, a fact made all the more apparent by our young ages. I never did spend much time with her. I was, however, able to discern two things about her: one, that she was obsessed with soulmates and was desperate to find hers, and, two, that she would likely leave a long trail of broken hearts behind her in the process. Though impossible to know exactly who she'd grow up to be as an adult, she'd struck me as having the exact kind of personality that I've known many men to fall for in an instant. She was a charming child, and I was right to suspect that she'd also become a charming adult.

Yet, when I saw her with Gatsby, I couldn't help but feel like she was humoring him, that even though they were soulmates, her heart would never truly belong to him. It was so discordant an image compared to my memory of Daisy-as-a-child. I almost began to suspect that Daisy might somehow have found a second soulmate in Tom.

The concept is not entirely unheard of, though it's rare enough that I've never personally known anyone who had more than one. For all that I've thought about it, I truly don't think that's the case here. I've never seen Tom's soulmark. I don't even know where it's located, he hides it well enough. He doesn't strike me as the kind of man that would hide it if he knew who his soulmate was.

It wouldn't surprise me if he'd found his soulmate in one of his past flings, but he'd still ended up discarding her like all the rest. Maybe she was too poor. Not pretty enough. Had some other inconsequential imperfection that only _he_ could take issue with in a soulmate. Or perhaps he'd never met her at all. Like most things about Tom, it isn't exactly a lovely subject to ponder, so I try to avoid it at all costs.

No one even knows how soulmate matches are determined, if it's all random luck or if there's some kind of deeper meaning in it all. My parents aren't soulmates and yet I've never known them to be anything less than madly in love. In my loneliest moments when I find myself staring at my dowsing rods, looking for answers, I think of them for comfort. It's a method I've never known to fail.

When I look at Gatsby and feel my heart dissolve a fluttering warmth into the pit of my stomach, I have no such role model. I search and I search but I come up blank every time. Perhaps I see my love for him reflected in his love for Daisy. That eternal yearning for the unattainable and divine. But Gatsby cannot be both the object of my affection and the one I look to for comfort and understanding.

Perhaps Daisy sensed this desperation in me, and that had led her to try to set me up with her friend, Jordan.

Jordan and I were not soulmates, and I cannot, to this day, explain the relief I felt when she took off her white glove to shake my hand and neither of our lines crossed.

I learned later that Jordan had already found her soulmate, had left him behind in whatever small town she came from. He didn't have the drive, she'd explained, that if she'd stayed with him, she'd never get as far as she had on her own. I've met very few people who'd decided to ignore their soulmark and to leave fate behind, but Jordan seemed happy enough. In a way, she was exactly who I wanted to be—completely emancipated from fate and its meddling. Fully in charge of her own life. It must be nice.

I wonder sometimes if Daisy knew we were doomed to fail from the start, that my general lack of ambition, my silence, and my passivity would never blend well with Jordan's brilliant, fast-paced lifestyle.

And so I slip away from her and back to West Egg where my thoughts will always inevitably return to Gatsby.

The man I'm in love with.

My cousin's soulmate.

**Author's Note:**

> I am never uploading a fic on mobile again. This is the worst.


End file.
